Multi-participant communication systems allow several participants in widespread locations to participate within a conversation, meeting, or other setting. For example, a conference bridge such as for teleconferencing or video conferencing allows participants located anywhere that phone or data service is available to dial into the teleconference or video conference bridge and participate within the discussion involving multiple other participants. As another example, dispatch trunks allow widespread groups of individuals, each of whom may be mobilized, to send and receive communications among the group.
While such multi-participant communication systems provide a very valuable service to the participants, there are drawbacks due to the manner in which individuals are permitted to contribute to the discussion. With the teleconference and video conference bridge examples, in some instances several if not all participants may have an open microphone so that the several participants may interject speech into the discussion at any time. This open microphone ensures that each participant has the ability to contribute as he or she wishes. However, the teleconference or videoconference bridge may combine the audio being received from all conference ports assigned to the participants such that background noise and side conversations from each participant location may be included in the audio being provided to all participants. These background noises and side conversations may begin to dominate the conference. Furthermore, in some conference bridges, audio for the bridge may be received from only a dominant port at any given time, and the port producing the background noise may be selected as the dominant port, thereby excluding legitimate audio from other ports corresponding to other participants.
This problem has been addressed in a couple of ways. One conventional way to address this problem is by providing the participant with the option to mute the microphone at his or her location. Of course, the participant must be aware that muting of the microphone is necessary, and it is often the case that the participant who is responsible for the background noise or side conversations is unaware that this unwanted audio is being interjected into the conference from his or her location. Furthermore, the participant must have the initiative to operate the mute function. Another conventional way to address this problem is by providing an administrator of the conference with an interface whereby the administrator can choose to mute a given port of the conference. The administrator either has to guess which port to mute, or in some conference bridges, the interface suggests which port is producing the unwanted audio to the administrator.
The dispatch trunk has similar issues regarding background noise and side conversations. Like some conference bridges, a trunk may limit the audio to a single highest priority port at any given time, thereby exacerbating the problem if the background noise becomes the highest priority port. Thus, the background noise or side conversations of one participant may serve to hinder or even altogether exclude other participants from interjecting legitimate speech onto the trunk. Considering that emergency services personnel rely on dispatch trunks to convey time-critical emergency information, the issue becomes even more significant.